Time to Start a Fire! - Acts 19:18-20

Original picture by Flickr User LearningLark and obtained under Creative Commons License 2.0

A while back I was studying with someone who was upset because a different congregation had refused to baptize her some years earlier. They continued to study with her and never told her that they would not baptize her in the future, but they could not, in good conscience baptize her at that moment. Without going into all of the details, from what I could gather from her side of the story years removed from the incident, the reason for the caution in taking her to the baptistery was because of a living situation that she was not ready to leave.
So we talked for a while about her past. And we talked for a while about her present and her future. The situation she had been in had ended and she could at least recognize that it was, in fact, a sinful situation. But she just couldn't get to the part that being willing to give up willful sin is actually a prerequisite for baptism. In fact, I asked her during our study if the circumstances worked out just right if she would be willing to compromise and go back into that situation provided their was an eventual plan to fix it in the future. And she was.

I tell you that story because I think it illustrates incredibly well a mindset of what it means to be a follower of Christ in our culture. In short...it's pretty easy and it doesn't cost very much. Most of the people that we know at least claim belief in Christ even if they never worship Him. Most at least pray to God even if they never listen to Him through Bible Study. Most claim to be followers of Christ even if there is no actual following. So when a new convert is contemplating baptism, the death and burial that is what it is all about is oftentimes simply missed.

That was certainly not the case in the book of Acts. I love this story about the conversion of the Ephesians. And one of the reasons I love it is because there are some really incredible miracles recorded. There's a super cool story of a demon possessed man beating up some false prophets who were claiming the name of Jesus as the magic words necessary to drive demons out but they were not actually in Christ nor using the power of His Spirit...so they ran out of the house naked and bleeding! (I say cool because my sick sense of humor kind of laughs at the absurdity of the situation when I picture it in my mind! It obviously was not cool for those running away!)

And the result of all of these miracles and demons being driven out only by the true followers of Christ?

"When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor." (Acts 19:17)

But while the name of Jesus was held in high honor. I want you to notice the phrase that Luke uses after he recounts the true repentance that was demonstrated by the Ephesian brothers and sisters who had once practiced witchcraft.

In the verses above, we see that they came out confessing their past sins in witchcraft. And they were so serious about leaving their lives of sin that they burned all of their spell books. Luke even points out the total value of the scrolls they burned-- 50,000 drachmas! Now I know next to nothing about ancient Greek drachmas so I've been trying to figure out how much that was worth. I haven't found a good answer but what I seem to keep coming to is that most people think it was worth somewhere around a day's wages. Of course a day's wages looks different in different parts of the world, so it's kind of hard to put a number on that value, but let's break it down like this...50,000 days divided by 365 days in a year = almost 137 years worth of wages for one person!

If you know something about the Greek drachma and can enlighten us more I'd love for you to post a comment below, but here's the point...however much it was worth...IT WAS A LOT OF MONEY! We can know that just by the fact that Luke bothers to point it out. Why am I going on about this?

Because immediately after Luke records the extent to which they repented, he says this:

"In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power." (Acts 19:20)

Now remember...after recording the miracles that had been taking place and the story about the demons who recognized the power of Jesus, but pounced on someone claiming the name falsely, Luke said, "the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor" (Acts 19:17b). But now he says that it wasn't just held in honor...but that the word of the Lord actually spread and grew in power!

What's the difference? Well, maybe I'm making too much out of it, but I think there is a lot to say about the power of the gospel to change lives. And I think we have grown too comfortable praising Jesus' name and holding it in honor on Sundays  because we believe the stories we have heard about Him in the Bible, but not living like we have actually repented on Monday. And I think that lack of repentance is one of the main reasons we have such a hard time spreading the word of the Lord and allowing its power to grow in us and around the world.

The new Ephesian Christians recognized the glory that they had found in Christ. They wanted nothing to do with anything that was in opposition to the new abundant life that they had found. They weren't content to leave it in a closet or sell it to someone else to get it out of the house. They burned it...at great cost to themselves.

Perhaps there are some things that we need to burn today. No, not literally (unless of course what you are holding onto from your past life is in the form of tangible things like movies and cds and magazines... then maybe there would be some real value in starting a fire in the back yard!). But maybe we need to completely burn some bridges to sin that have constantly tripped us up in the past. Maybe there are some attitudes that we have been content to keep in the back of our personalities for when someone really steps on our toes that we need to completely purify out with the fire of the Spirit. 

May we be a truly repentant people. May we not think about the cost of what it means to repent and be sad. May we think about the riches that are ours if we will only give up those temporary things and be joyful in our repentance! And may the word of God spread and grow in power as Christians everywhere start living on Monday what we are singing about on Sunday.